Cultivating Positive Peer Groups and Friendships

Middle school is the ultimate transitional time in a young person's life. Amidst all the other changes--physical, emotional, academic, social--one's friendships are also growing, evolving, expanding, and sometimes ending. Students from several different elementary schools are suddenly thrown together and new peer and friendship groups form. During a period of such momentous change and flux, the shifting and expanding of friendships and acquaintanceships can be unsettling and disorienting. This book provides a wise and reassuring guide to the seeming chaos, offering insightful and gentle advice on how to make new friends, maintain old friendships, get along and work well with new classmates, and confront the end of friendships that no longer work with compassion and empathy. Full of useful strategies for spotting and dealing potentially toxic friendships, "bad crowds," and bullies, this book provides all the tools a young person needs to surround him or herself with kind, dynamic, engaged, and mutually supportive and nurturing friends-for-life.